Apple Took Down These ICE-Tracking Apps. The Developers Aren’t Giving Up
Legal experts WIRED spoke with said the ICE surveillance and documentation apps that Apple removed from its App Store are clear examples of free speech protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. “These apps publish constitutionally protected speech. They publish truthful information on matters of public concern that people obtained simply by attending public events,” says David Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
That hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from attacking the developers behind these ICE-related apps. When ICEBlock first rose to the top position on Apple’s App Store in April, the Trump administration responded by threatening to sue the developer. “We’re watching him,” Bondi said on Fox News about ICEBlock’s Aaron. “And he better watch out.”
Neither the White House nor ICE immediately responded to requests for comment.
Digital rights researchers say the situation illustrates the dangers when key platforms and communication channels are centrally controlled, whether directly by governments or other powerful entities like big tech companies. Regardless of what’s officially available on the Google Play Store, Android users can download whatever apps they want. But Apple’s ecosystem has always been a walled garden, an approach the company has long touted for its security benefits, including the ability to further filter out malicious apps.
For years, a group of researchers and enthusiasts have attempted to create “jailbreaks” for iPhones to hack their own devices to bypass Apple’s closed ecosystem. However, recently, jailbreaking has become less common. This is partly due to advances in iPhone security, but partly related to the trend of attackers in recent years exploiting complex chains of vulnerabilities that could potentially be used to jailbreak malware, particularly mercenary spyware.
“The closed ecosystem motivation has sort of diminished as Apple has added features that previously required a jailbreak, like wallpapers, tethering, better notifications, and a private mode in Safari,” says Will Strafach, a longtime iOS security and jailbreak researcher. “But this situation with ICE apps highlights the problem that Apple is the arbiter and single point of failure.”
Stanford’s Pfefferkorn warns that while US tech companies are not controlled by the state, they have, in his view, become “happy handmaidens” when it comes to “suppressing free speech and dissent.”
“This is especially disappointing,” Pfefferkorn says, “coming from the company that brought us the Think Different ad campaign, which invoked MLK, Gandhi and Muhammad Ali, none of whom would likely be big fans of ICE today.”
